Interview - The Miracle Morning with Hal Elrod

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I am thrilled to be chatting with Hal Elrod. Hal wrote the great book the Miracle Morning, subtitled the not so Obvious Secret, Guaranteed to Transform youm life before 8am It's a really, really, really good book. I highly recommend it. It's a quick, fun, inspiring read that lives up to the subtitle of it will make a significant difference in your life before 8:00am so, Hal, thanks for taking the time. I'm excited to unpack some of my favorite big ideas with you, Brian.

It's an honor, man. I have truly followed your work for many years. And when you first reviewed the Miracle Morning and Philosopher notes, I was like, what? This is. Brian Johnson did a philosopher notes on Miracle Morning. I'm so exc. Excited.

Right on. One of our investors actually said, you've got to check out this book. It's awesome. He had that impact. I got it and I immediately read it and fell in love with it. It was so great to hear that we were already connected virtually and here we are. I rarely ask, actually. I've never asked someone an interview to tell me their story. I always just jump straight into it and get into the wisdom. But your story is so cool and, and how you responded to such a big challenge in your personal life is so important that I'd love for you to describe briefly kind of your head on incident and how you approach that and how that impacted the work that you do now.

Yeah. Thank you for that. So, I mean, there's. I call in life, I say I've had two rock bottoms. And I think that we all have had rock bottoms and most of us have rock bottoms to come. And the way that I define a rock bottom is it's that time, those times in our where we've hit a low point where we've been tested with a level of adversity we've never experienced before and it really tests us. Some people, they fold, they cave, they turn into a victim and they complain or they get down or they let it ruin them. And other people take their adversity and they find a way to turn that into an advantage and they use it as fuel for the whole what is it? Setup is just I'm blanking something set up for a comeback. Anyway, I totally butchered that. But anyway, the point is, you know, the first rock bottom was in 1999. I was 20 years old. I had just turned 20. I was speaking at a sales conference as one of the top salespeople in the history of the company that I work for, which was Cutco Cutlery. I had broken a bunch of their, you know, sales records and one night giving a speech. I drove home after the speech and I'd gotten my first standing ovation that night from the audience. So for me, it was kind of a real, you know, you know, I was on a high. I was elated. It was like, wow. My dream at that time was to. Once I hit the hall of fame with my company, I wanted to be a professional speaker. But I always had a lot of self doubt, you know, am I good enough? Sure, the Cutco reps like me, but you know, I don't know if real, you know, real people would like me. And that night when I got a standing ovation, I just was like, wow, maybe, maybe, you know, that's like an affirmation. I'm meant to do this. And so driving home that night at about 70 miles an hour, 11:30 at night, in a brand new Ford Mustang, I just bought my first new car three weeks earlier. I'm cruising down the freeway, freeway at 70 miles an hour. And a man that I had never met before got in his Chevy truck, Much larger than my little Ford Mustang, his Chevy full size truck. He got on the freeway after he had drinking, a couple of beers. He was tired, I would imagine, late at night, and he got on the freeway going the wrong way. He was actually going against oncoming traffic. And I don't remember the headlights coming at me. My last memory that night was getting on the freeway and kind of setting the cruise control. And then I, about 10 minutes later is when this occurred. But this drunk driver comes at me full speed and between, you know, my car doing 70 miles an hour, his car doing estimated 80, 70 to 80, about 140, 150 mile an hour, head on impact occurred. The front of my car smashed into the front of his car and his car kind of won. As the bigger vehicle smashed the front of my car, Airbags exploded in the interior. And the worst was yet to come as my car spun off the drunk driveway or driver, sorry, kind of sideways and the car behind me, My car spun sideways so that my driver's side door was a target for the car that had been traveling a few lengths behind me. And they crashed into my door at 70 miles an hour. And for anybody listening, I found it's helpful to like kind of get the idea of that impact. If you put your hands up in front of you, like you're driving a car, like your hands are on a steering wheel. And look over your left shoulder and imagine a car coming at you at six seventy miles an hour. Doesn't even break, just hits in the door of your car. And it crushed the left side of my car instantaneously. I broke 11 bones. I punctured my lung. I ruptured my spleen, my femur, biggest bone in the human body, Broke in two pieces. Almost lost my ear completely. My eye socket was destroyed. I mean, pretty bad. And unable to withstand the pain. Thankfully, I was immediately in a coma. And I was laying on the side of the freeway in my car, head falling over, bleeding out of my eye. And my ear and the top of my head had been sliced open with all these broken bones. And it took the paramedics an hour, I guess the fire department really, to pull me out of the car. They had to cut the roof off and yank me out. And when they did, I had lost so much blood and kind of the release of that, that happened. When they pulled me out, I actually died. I was clinically dead for approximately six minutes while they rushed me over to the helicopter, the medevac helicopter, and pumped blood back in my body and, you know, oxygen and use the defibrillators to shock me back to life. And thankfully, they didn't give up because it was about six minutes later I started breathing again. I was rushed to the hospital, spent six days in a coma, underwent quite a few surgeries. I've got metal rods in my leg, my arm, my elbow, my eye socket. And came out of the coma to face the reality that the doctor said I would probably never walk again. I had significant brain damage as well. And, you know, that's kind of the reality that I was faced with. And I can, of course, you know, I'll pause in case you have any questions, but then I can tell you kind of the synopsis of how that story ended in terms of the comeback.

Yeah, well, I appreciate you sharing that and definitely captured the vivid detail and just the. The horror of that. I mean, this. Wow. It's almost impossible. It is impossible for me to wrap my brain around the actual experience of that and then tell us about the comeback and how you dealt with that and then how you kind of reconstructed your life.

So it was. I came out of the coma, and according to my mom and dad, I don't remember the first week out of the coma. So I was in a coma for about six days. Came out of the coma, first week, pretty fuzzy in My memory. But it's been told to me so many times by my, everyone that was there. You know, my mom and dad and my friends, visitors, my sister, they've all kind of told me what that week was like to where I don't really know where my memories end and, you know, or begin and just the stories kind of what, what's, what. So basically though, I came out of the coma and I was, for the most part, I was, I was positive. And the, in fact, my mom and dad said my first thing once I had my bearings is I started trying to sell Cutcoat to the doctors and nurses. And my parents were mortified, going, hal, God. You know, they're apologizing on my behalf and I'm going, dad, do you know how much money a doctor makes? Like, come on, don't you know? This is like, this is a great opportunity. And so basically, here's the important part of the story and the takeaway for everybody listening. My parents were called in by the doctors a week after I was out of my coma. So two weeks after the crash, and the doctor sat them down, they said, we're very concerned with Hal. We believe that your son is in denial. Now. They said, physically he's doing well, his vitals are good, he's definitely stable now. He's healing. But every time we see your son, they said, he's always smiling and laughing and joking and making us laugh. And they said, that's not normal for a 20 year old young man that's being told he may never walk again. They said, so we've seen this before where his reality, your son's reality, is so unimaginable and painful for him to accept. He can't accept it. He's checked out, he's delusional, he's in denial and he's just pretending everything's okay because you know that that feels good, but eventually it's gonna come crashing down. And they said, we want you to talk to him and find out how he's really feeling. So my dad came in, explained the doctor's concerns and he said, hal, how are you really feeling? The doctor said it's very normal that if you're feeling depressed or, or sad or scared or angry, these are very normal emotions. But it's very important that you face them and talk about them so we can work through them. And my dad, at this time, I'm laying in a hospital bed, I can barely move. And I can tell he's like, he's either been crying or he's about to cry. He's very upset. It's hard for him to have this conversation. So I really thought about my answer. How am I feeling? Am I sad? Am I angry? Am I depressed? Am I scared? And I looked at my dad, I said, dad, I thought you knew me better than that. I remember I live by the five minute rule. I learned that in my sales training, my Cutco training, the five minute rule which says it's okay to be negative when things go wrong, but not for more than five minutes. And the premise of it was, you know, the idea that, look, when stuff happens, it's out of your control, there's no point, you know, yeah, we five minutes to bitch, moan, complain, vent, kick something, you know, whatever, like ah, you know, feel the emotion, don't bottle it up. But after you feel it for five minutes, the rule said, and you literally I would set my timer on my phone for five minutes and then I would focus 100% of my energy. I would accept the thing that was out of my control, can't go back in time, can't change it, it's happened, it's over. And I would focus all of my energy on, okay, what is in my control right now, what can I do now to move me toward where I want to go? And I said, dad, it's been two weeks since the accident, alright, my five minutes is up and I can't change that I was in a car accident. But I can choose to be the happiest person I've ever been, even going through the most difficult time of my life. And this is what I said to my dad. And I think this kind of will wrap up this lesson for people. I said, there's only one of two options that are the way that I see that this thing can play out. Number one, the doctors, they may be right and I will never walk again. And I said, I've already accepted that. Because if I am stuck in a wheelchair the rest of my life, I said, I'll be the happiest person you've ever seen in a wheelchair. Because I'm in a wheelchair. Either way, I could either be miserable and angry and play the victim card or whatever, or I could be the most grateful person because I'm still alive and I can do the things I want to do even though I'm in a wheelchair. I said, but the second possibility is I will walk again. I said, the doctors might be experts in medicine, but they're not experts in me. And I said, that's where my energy goes. That's where My focus is I'm not dwelling on the accident and what happened to me that I can't change because I can't change it. I'm only dwelling on the possibilities that I want to create for myself. I want to walk again. I'm thinking about that constantly. I'm praying about it, I'm visualizing it. And I said, I will continue to do that. And I'm going to therapy and I'm doing double time in therapy. I'm doing everything they're telling me to do and then some. And I will do that until I either walk or I'm proven that I cannot walk. I think that for anybody listening, what's your wheelchair? What's a circumstance in your life that's out of your control? Maybe it's something that happened in the past that you continue to create suffering over. Like maybe your childhood was difficult and you use that as a reason for why you know, your life isn't the way that you want it to be, or why you're not as happy or what, you know, whatever it is. But what's your wheelchair? What's that circumstance, whether it's present or in the past, that is out of your control, that you create emotional pain because you wish it were different, you wish it didn't happen, or you wish it weren't happening. And that's the greatest lesson I learned from the accident, is that every negative emotion that we have ever felt in our lives or could ever feel is self created. It's not the thing that we think is causing us the pain. It's the fact that we're not willing to accept, accept the thing. It's the level of resistance we have to our reality that creates the level of emotional pain that we experience in our reality. And so once you learn to it, you just have to make the commitment. You know what, that makes sense. I'm going to start accepting all things I can't change and focusing only on what I can change. And the five minute rule is a great segue, by the way, so that you're like, I still need, I need a little bit of time to be upset. Can I have a little time? Yeah, yeah, you can have a little time, but that really is it. And then here's what happened. So to wrap up the story a week later, a week after I told my dad that the doctors came in with routine X rays. And this, by the way, this was three weeks after the crash itself, after my femur broke in half and my pelvis broke in three places. And the doctors came in and they said, we don't know how to explain this, Hal, but your body is healing so rapidly based on these X rays, we're gonna let you actually walk tomorrow. Take your first step tomorrow in therapy. So it went from never walk again to at one point they said maybe like in a year we can reassess to, you know, three weeks after the crash. And it's one of those, you know, the rest is history, so to speak. I eventually went on to run a 52 mile ultra marathon because I hated running. And I thought it would be a really profound, you know, kind of example for people of like, hey, doesn't matter what your people try to limit you or you limit yourself, you, it doesn't matter if you're told you'd never walk again. You could run a 52 mile ultramarathon. You know, you can do, truly do anything.

So that is awesome. Just a case study in all the things we talk about in Optimal Living and Philosopher's Notes and of course all of your work. So then bring us to the second challenge, the second rock bottom, I think you described it as. And then that will be the segue into your miracle morning.

Yeah, the second rock bottom was about nine years later, 2008, and it was significantly worse than the first, which, whenever I say that or tell, whether I'm speaking to an audience or you know, what I'm doing, like a lot of, I'll do like an interview on a TV show and I'll say that. And you always, it's always like, how could it be worse, right? You died the first time. Did you die longer the second time? Like what, what was worse? And I, But I mean it in all seriousness. And you know, interestingly enough, everyone I share this with, you probably can relate to this a lot more for most people, more than the, you know, a death defying car accident. And it was simply the. My economic. The economic crash 2008, when the US economy crashed. I had built a. I had hit the hall of fame with my company and moved on beyond that because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I really wanted to, I wanted to write a book, which I wrote my first book, Taking Life Head On. My dream was to be a speaker, a professional speaker, which, you know, as I mentioned, that been a dream at that point for nine or 10 years. And then I had recently hired a coach, a success coach, and he totally transformed my life. And then I decided I want to do that. Like, I love the idea of my job is to help people achieve their potential. And all three of those kind of fit together, you know, the book, the speaking, they were all kind of in alignment with my purpose. And so I had built a right, right under a six figure career. I think in the last 12 months I'd done like $96,000, was trying to break that six fig as an entrepreneur. And then 2008 happened and I went from, I just bought a brand new house, I had bought my dream car. Like, life was good, business was good, life was good. I had met the woman of my dreams, who I was eventually I did marry. So she stuck around through all these rocky times we're about to share. But what happened was when the US economy crashed, over half of my clients, they were affected by it. They weren't making money and they couldn't pay me for coaching. So I lost over half of my income. I lost my house back to the bank. I couldn't afford to pay the mortgage. I went from being a Dave Ramsey student who was like, pay the credit cards off every month, no debt, to I accumulated $53,000 in credit card debt. That was my balance that was growing every month. Six months after the kind of crash started to happen and I stopped exercising completely and I got deeply depressed. And I mean, that really was rock bottom. At least with the car accident, like, it only couldn't get worse. Like, I came out of the accident, it's like, all right, all I have to is to look forward to healing and getting better. Plus, I had so much support around me. My friends and my family and the doctors and the nurses, like, so much love and support all around me. I think those two aspects are what made it, you know, I could deal with it. This was where I tried to apply everything I knew about acceptance to my situation. I kind of hit rock bottom and I thought, all right, man, I've lost a few clients. Like, things aren't good. I'm getting out of shape. All right, this is my rock bottom. I'm gonna make it better. And then it got worse. And then it got worse. And then I lost another client. And then I lost another client. Then I lost my house. It was this downward spiral that was so difficult for me. I just wasn't equipped. I didn't know how to handle it. And what happened that turned it around faster than I ever thought possible. In fact. I mean, the turnaround was less than two months of doing my first miracle morning, which I'll get into here, but I more than doubled my income. I went from being in the worst shape of my life to deciding that I was Going to train for that ultramarathon just to really see if the miracle morning could push me beyond my limits. And my depression went away. No joke. It didn't take two months for the depression to go away. It was my very first day of doing the miracle morning that my depression, I won't say it went away, but it went from being like a, you know, like an 8 or a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10 to my first, at the end of my first miracle morning, it was at like a two. Because the miracle morning created so much clarity and motivation and energy and optimism and excitement. Because I realized if I do this every day, if this is how I start every morning, it's only a matter of time before my life starts to change. If I get better, it's going to get better. And if, you know, my outer world will kind of reflect the inner world. And yeah, it was less than two months. And it wasn't called the miracle morning, by the way. It wasn't like I woke up day one, I'm like, oh, I'm doing my miracle morning. It was, I'm doing personal development at 5am and then after, because the results were so profound, it was at the two month mark. I'm like, when I was like, I had this like just kind of this thought I was writing in my schedule, I was like, dude, it feels like a miracle. Like this is like a miracle. I cannot believe how far I've come in two months. And I go, dude, this is my miracle morning. You know, it wasn't going to be a book. It wasn't, it wasn't going to be anything. And it just, and it kind of gradually I told a coaching client about it. She, after a week said, oh my gosh, you know, everything you said is happening for me. I told all my coaching clients, you know, 90% of them, same thing. And that's when I went, wow. I have like a responsibility to turn this into a book. And you know, my fears and insecurities and everything. It took me four years to finally write that book. I should say it took me four months to write the book. It took me four years to get over my fears and insecurities to actually commit to write the book.

That's awesome. Well, give us again, thank you for the insight. And I think you're right. I think that that experience all of us have experienced in one way or another. And it's great to kind of juxtapose your superhuman response to the Head on with a superhuman response to the challenges of everything. Happening in 2008. So then tell us about the miracle morning.

Yeah, so here. So the way that it happened is I actually, I went on a run and it was basically six months of this downward spiral and depression. And my wife finally, she was just my girlfriend at the time, but she said, sweetheart, I hate seeing you like this. Like, you're, you're just. I've never seen you depressed. You're like, normally so positive, you know, and I want to help you, but I don't know what to do. She said, why don't you call John, right? You know, John is one of my best friends, a brilliant business mind. She goes, he's so smart. He can probably help you turn this around. And the thing is, because I was a success coach, it was an identity crisis. And I didn't tell anyone, not even my close friends, that how bad it was. I just put on a smiling face, like, everything's fine, you know, things are fine, or whatever. And so I finally called John and his advice, I was, you know, I poured my heart out to him on the phone. And I'm sitting there ready to, you know, jot down. I thought he'd like, say, okay, step one, you know, build a new website. Step three, optimize it, right? Like that. I was ready for, like, advice. He goes, hal, if I were you, I would. Because I told him I wasn't exercising at all. He goes, I would go for a run every morning or a jog or a walk. And he said, nurture your physical, mental, and emotional well being by exercising each morning. Get blood and oxygen to your brain so you can think clearer. Release endorphins to feel better. He said, while you're on that walk, listen to an audiobook every morning and listen to an audiobook in the area that you need to improve, which is business, finances, whatever. And I go, dude, I hate running. Like, I don't want to run every day. And he goes, what do you hate worse, running or everything you just told me about? And I was like, all right, screw you, I'll go for a run. And I went for the first run. This is the quote that changed my life. Jim Rohn. He said, you, level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become. And in that moment, I think I had heard the quote before, and you may have heard the quote before, people listening, but it just hit me. I go, I don't dedicate time every day to my personal development. Not, like, consistent every day, no matter what time and Therefore, I'm not becoming the person that I need to be to create the success that I want in my life. And so my idea, I ran home and I thought, I'm going to spend like an hour on Google and I'm going to try to do some research, read some articles, figure out what are the, like, what are the world's most successful people do every day for personal development? And I'm going to pick like, the. You know, basically I did that. I had a list of six practices, and I thought I'm going to do like the top one or two every day, six days a week minimum, no matter what, and I'm going to turn my life around. And as I dove back into Google to try to assess, determine which of these six is the best, right? Which of these six will accelerate my success and get me out of this spot the fastest. And I just, I couldn't. None were more convincing. It depended on who you talk to, right? So one of the practices of the miracle morning is silence, which, you know, meditation is probably the most popular form for people of silence. But Ray Dalio, who is a billionaire and runs the largest hedge fund in the world, he swears by meditation. He says that meditation is the number one key to his financial success. Not his spiritual success, financial success. So I'm going, okay, this guy's a billionaire. And then I found an article, another article that taught 20 CEOs, Fortune 500 CEOs, that swear by meditation. And I'm reading that, I'm like, dude, I got to meditate. These guys are hardcore successful business folks. And they're saying meditation is the key to them performing at their best in business. So, all right, meditations for sure. But as I'm going through, basically, you could find any famous person, successful person, that said no. Affirmations have been the biggest key to my success. Will Smith said that. No visualization. Jim Carrey said, I mean, on and on. And so it finally hits me, dude, what if I did all of these? And through all my research, not a single person did I see do more than one or two. What if I did all of these? That would be like personal development on steroids. And I woke up the next morning, I did all six of them, 10 minutes each. And that was the morning that changed my life. Because now, granted, it took two months of this to really see results, but in terms of the internal results, at the end of my first miracle morning, like I said, the depression went almost completely away. And I felt so motivated and energized, and I just Thought the feeling, like this strong feeling inside me was this could be the one thing that changes everything. In fact, I think this is the one thing that's going to change everything for me. If I start every day at a level 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 internally, it's only a matter of time before my outer world reflects my inner world and I start to take my level of success from the two that it's at right now to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and eventually 10 as I become a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and eventually level 10. So that's essentially how it played out.

I love it. I like to joke that if you go out and you meditate, you exercise, you eat well, the kind of basic fundamentals that I talk about, right? And you get a good night of rest, and we're going to jump into your savors. But you do those things. I challenge you to have a really bad day.

Yeah, that's it. You can have a bad day.

Things may go wrong. You're not going to have perfect days every day, but you're just not going to bottom out. It's just you can't do that when you're doing that day in and day out.

And the beauty of that, by the way, Brian, is that when you do have a bad day, meaning, like, you know, something happens that you're like, ah, that's terrible. For most people, they go through. They go through their day, right? They work or whatever, they wake up, they hit the snooze button three times. I call this a mediocre morning. Then they wait, by the way, to wake up until they have to wake up. That's a big premise of miracle morning is not just what you do during the morning, but why you wake up. That you wake up not at the last minute to get out the door, but you wake up because you want to wake up and start your day with purpose and passion and productivity, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's a big part, is that when you, if you do have a bad day, it's like every night when you go to bed, you get to hit the reset button. Because for most people, while they're waking up from a bad, you know, a bad day, and they just wake up back into the, you know, the same type of circumstance. We get to wake up into the miracle morning, and it's like. It's like this. This beautiful protected pocket of time that's dedicated to your nurturing yourself and becoming the person that you need to be to Create anything you want for your life. And so it's kind of like, yeah, yeah, you can have a bad day, but it's like it doesn't start over the next day. You have to reset it with that, you know, that morning ritual.

It's so true. Versus you have a bad day and then you stay up late and you do whatever, then you sleep in and then that bad day cascades and spirals down.

Yeah.

Versus that. It's almost like, you know, when kids bowl, right? You blow up the big balloon things in the gutter, you know, or you can't, you just can't throw a gutter ball. You throw, it comes back in the middle.

I like that analogy.

Beautiful. Scaffolding is another frame that we use to kind of protect yourself. So good. So you mentioned silence, you mentioned affirmations, you mentioned visualizations just in passing, and of course the exercise. But for people who haven't read your book yet, Hal outlined what he calls lifesavers. S A V E R. Silence, affirmations, visualizations, exercise, reading, and then scribing. I love that. Writing down. Tell us whatever you want to tell us about that.

Here's what I'm going to tell you. Because we kind of covered what they are. And for me, when I first wrote those down, I almost got discouraged because I was like, I've heard of all of these, right? And like our society, we're conditioned. Like we want something new, cutting edge. Never heard of that before, right? You know, it's like I've tried everything to lose weight, but oh, but look at this new diet pill or this new six minute workout you. Oh, I never heard of that. Maybe that'll be the thing that'll work, right? So for me, that was, I had that same mindset. And then I, as I was looking, man, these are all like as old as dirt. And then I realized, wait a minute, these are what the world's most successful people have done, right? These are their practices that they've done since before I was born. And they still continue to do, you know, the. And the morning routine, by the way, in and of itself is a practice, right? Like that. Yes, there's the six practices you do during the miracle morning, but the morning routine in and of itself, you know, Tim Ferriss, I mean, that's the one question that he asked every guest on his podcast. What's your morning routine? Or what's your, you know, your morning ritual? Because it's so important. So here's what I want to share on that. Did you see what I What I posted about Robert Kiyosaki reading the Miracle Morning and telling me it's changed his life.

I didn't tell us, okay, dude.

So this is like, my energy about to go up because I'm still, like, fired up on this. It happened just recent, pretty recent. So I spoke at an event, a mastermind event, like, four months ago, and Robert Kiyosaki was one of the keynote speakers as well. And I got to, you know, meet him and gave him a copy of the Miracle Morning. Now I'm think, granted, I'm going, somebody who has read arguably every personal development book ever written. You know, I mean, at least the top, probably 500 or whatever, who is a multimillionaire who is 65 years old and probably doesn't, you know, you'd imagine is kind of like, yeah, I pretty much know what I need to know at this point. I figured the odds of him opening that book, let alone reading it, were not very good, right? But. But you miss all the shots you don't take. So I'm like, robert, I wrote you note. There you go. Well, I got it three, like, three weeks later. This is probably a month ago, maybe less. I got an email from his, like, manager or publicist. They said, Robert and his wife Kim are huge fans of the Miracle Morning. They want to have you on the Rich dad radio show. So that was the first, like, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm running, telling my wife and stuff, and I'm so excited. But. But I had no idea. You know, I thought maybe he just thought it'd be interesting to have the author of that book on the show. But I had no idea the personal testimonial he would give. I get on the show and he goes to his audience, he says, you guys, he said. He goes, everybody, I've read the Miracle Morning three times. I've read the book three times. And I'm like, what? And he said, I'm like, I don't think I've read it three times. Right? And he says. He goes, I'm on day 60. I've done 60 consecutive days of the Miracle Morning, and it's completely changed my life.

Wow.

I mean, he. And then he. And then he got aggressive about telling his audience they had to buy the book. Like, in fact, his wife goes, hal, tell us about the Savers. And he goes, no, don't tell us, because everybody's going to go, oh, I already know about those. I've heard about those. He goes, you know, bs, you need to. It was just. It Was awesome. So, so then, so here's what I want to say about the Savers is Robert, what he said about them. I actually, you know, I emailed him. I had written every word he said. I'm like, hey, can I put this as a testimonial in the book? I'll reprint it. And he said, actually, I want to write my own. And he wrote me this really long, awesome endorsement. Well, he said that he goes, the Savers are older than I am, he said, and most successful people do one of them, maybe two. He said, until I read the Miracle Morning and Howells acronym, the Saviors, I had never seen any. Anyone put them in all together, even half of them together, let alone all six of them in one ritual. And he said, now it's a part of my daily life. And then the kind of cool quote he said, doing the Savers each day is like pumping rocket fuel into my mind, body and spirit. So that's what I have to say on the Savers. And I guess, yes, don't listen to what I say. Listen to what Robert Kiyosaki says. But the last thing I'll say is this. If you've tried any of these before, like, affirmations, I just wrote an article for entrepreneur.com called why affirmations have failed you and four steps to change that. One of the things that, you know, when I was writing the Miracle Morning, I'm a very actionable person. And like, affirmations and visualization, the way they've been taught for decades, are very like, kind of woo, woo. Like, you say things like, you lie to yourself. I'm a millionaire. I am a millionaire, Right? And if you're a smart person, your subconscious mind's like, bullshit. You're not even a hundred thousandaire. You're like, you know, it's like, stop lying. The truth will always prevail. So my affirmations, the way I teach you to create them, those four steps in the book are around, what do you want? Why do you want it? What are you committed to doing to achieve it? How often do you need to take that action and for what duration of time? Like, the affirmations are designed to keep you focused on what's most important to you, why it's important to you, and then what you need to do every day. Affirmations. I pull up my schedule and I'm like, all right. This reminded me of what I have to do today to ensure that I reach that goal. Is my schedule. Is that in my schedule? It isn't. Okay, let Me put it in it is right. So those are the affirmations. They're designed to get you to take the actions. And then last thing I'll say is visualization has been taught over the years to visualize this end result of seeing, you know, the dream house or the million dollar check or whatever. And science has proven that it's counterproductive because you trick your subconscious into thinking that that result is all but guaranteed because you've seen it so many times. But the reality is, it's the action you need to be visualizing. You need to see yourself not crossing the finish line at the marathon and arms in the air and photographers taking pictures. You need to see yourself lacing up your running shoes, heading out your front door with a smile on your face. Especially if you hate running. A smile on your face and a feeling of today is going to be the best day running that I've ever created for myself. Right. So those are some examples of the way I teach. All of the savers are designed to be very practical and very actionable.

Love it. So good. Love everything you just shared there, the visualizations, the affirmations. And of course the book has all the details there. Tell us one more thing, if you will. I want to hear you describe habit building. The way you describe the three phases of that is just phenomenal. Can you give us the nutshell version of that?

Yes, I am. For me as a coach, I, you know, I as a life coach, professional coach, I do group and private coaching. So I mean, that's one of the biggest studies of my career as a coach is like habits. How do I get people to change, you know, their behaviors and their habits? And so the best kind of combining everything I've learned and then testing it on myself and then testing on my clients. This is what I came up with. Yeah, that's in the book. And I think it's the most effective mindset and, or strategy to implement any new habit into your life or change any bad habit. In 30 days, there's basically three 10 day phases and most people aren't aware of these. And so they end up failing somewhere in the middle because they just go, oh my gosh, this isn't getting any easier. It's still difficult or I hate it or whatever. And they throw in the towel. And New Year's resolutions are a great example of that. By the way. If you go to the gym, you know, the first week of January, it's packed, right? You know, like third week of January and the parking lot's back to what it was in December because people don't stick to it. So if you take these three 10 day phases and you apply these to your life, and I encourage people to do, to live Your Life in 30 Day challenges where every month, every 30 days, don't wait until. Well, actually, yeah, don't wait until like the first of the month. Just start today. Every 30 days you identify a positive habit or a bad habit you want to get rid of and you do it. And at the end of the year, 12 productive habits. I mean you're, you're, you're like in the top 1% of our society. It's that easy. So the first 10 days are what I call unbearable. The days 1 through 10 are unbearable. And it feels right. New habits. Like you're like, if you hate running, days one through 10, you're like, oh my God, I hate this. Like it hurts. I'm like, I'm so sore, I don't want to do it today. You know, that's how the first 10 days feel, right? But let me ask you a question. If you understand that this 10 day phase is temporary. 10 days, give or take some people, maybe it's only unbearable for six days, or maybe it takes you 12 days, whatever. But give or take 10 days. And by the way, I believe that our mind creates our reality. So if you tell yourself it's a 10 day phase, it's a 10 day phase. So after 10 days of unbearable, you understand it's going to get easier. So the question is, can you do anything if it's a habit that's going to change your life forever? Like the miracle morning, for example, can you bear it for 10 days? Of course, the second 10 day phase, 11 days, 11 through 20 are uncomfortable. So when the unbearable phase is over, it's not like you're like, whoa, I went from unbearable to like, this is the greatest thing ever, right? You go from unbearable to like, I don't hate it anymore, but it's still not really my favorite thing to do. It's kind of uncomfortable, right? And, and that's where, you know, commitment is crucial because you could easily go, eh, yeah, I'm going to pass today. And then one day turns into two, turns into a week turns into, yeah, remember when I tried to become a runner or I tried to be an early riser? And then here's where the magic happens. Days 21 through 30 is what I call the unstoppable phase. And that's where, and here's what that actually looks like in real life. So when I was becoming decided I was going to run that ultra marathon and I had to train for it. First 10 days, I hated it. Second 10 days, I didn't really care for it. Third 10 days, and it was probably. I don't remember the exact day. Let's say it was day 21 or 23. I don't remember the exact day, but I remember the moment. I can picture myself sitting on the edge of my bed and I putting on my socks and grabbing my running shoes. And I remember the feeling of being excited to go out run that day. And it was unconscious. I wasn't aware of it until I was aware of it. I went, what the heck is going on? I'm like, can't get dressed fast enough. Because I'm excited to get out the front door and run. And that's why I call it the unstoppable phase. Because once you become acclimated to a habit, you actually start to find joy in it because it gets easier, you get better, right? You start to notice what's good about the habit. Maybe you start to see results. Like you're getting, you're, you're getting more endurance or you're getting your losing weight, whatever it is. But when you wake up that day and you go, dude, you're excited to wake up early, you're excited to go put the running shoes on, you're excited to do, you know, whatever it is or not do whatever it is, you're unstoppable. Because it's not hard to do something that you're excited to do. And if you commit for 30 days and you, you go into it going, Yep, the first 10 days are going to suck. Second 10 days are gonna be not so great. Third 10 days, I'm gonna find my stride. And I just wanna give you a warning. Sometimes, especially with the miracle morning there is what I call an infatuation period. In the very beginning, maybe it's your first day or your first three days, or some people, they actually go, hal, I didn't get to the unbearable. Like, I went from infatuation to like unstoppable. Uncomfortable was kind of in there. But the point is, often a new habit is like, when it's new and it's exciting, just like I call it infatuation because, like, you're dating a new person, right? You, you almost are. You just. It's exciting. And so that overrides the unbearableness of it. So be aware of that. If the first few days are easy and exciting and all of a sudden, day Four. You're like, oh, my God, I don't want to do this anymore. Right? Be aware that. Oh, yeah, that's right. I just had a little infatuation, but I still got six more days of unbearable. Right? So just go into it knowing that.

So good man. Amen to all that. Unbearable, uncomfortable, unstoppable. Just pure genius. I'm digging it. Tell me. Tell us where people can connect with you. And then you have a huge community around this now, right?

Yeah. Oh, man. I mean, it's. It's the. It's. So. It's a Facebook group, but it's unlike any Facebook group, any. Anybody listening that you've ever seen. I would. I would. I would argue. I don't. I don't mean I don't go to all in all the Facebook groups, but we. It's become the most engaged online community that I've ever seen. We have over 16,000 members, and the engagement in there is insane. Like, I don't even. I post in there maybe a few times a week, but we have. I don't even know how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of posts every week. And more importantly, if you, you know, if you need help with something, like, we have new members that come in and they're like, hey, I'm new here. I haven't even got the book yet or just got it or. And I'm struggling with this area of my life. Does anyone have any advice? I see all the time where, you know, by the end of the day, that person that doesn't really. No one knows them, but our community is so just generous and supportive. By the end of the day, that person has 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 comments on their post from people giving thoughtful advice on whatever that person's question was or whatever. So, yeah, come join the Miracle morning community on Facebook if you want to get. And do it like now, before. Don't even wait to get the book. Just, in fact, going in there will fight. You'll be like, oh, my gosh, I want whatever these guys are drinking. I want to drink that. And if you want to get the book, Amazon.com is the best place to get it, whether it's Kindle or paperback or audiobook Ibooks, too. If you're an ibooks reader and if you want to contact me, you can go to my website, halelrod.com h a l E L R O D and you can contact me there. Say hi or, you know, whatever else.

So love it. Appreciate you and your energy and your wisdom and your Passion, enthusiasm. It's contagious, it's inspiring and thrilled to be connected, man.

Ditto. Brian. I can check this off my bucket list. Actually, I checked it off my bucket list when you did the Philosopher note. So this is like, this is like a continuation. But thank you so much for having me and everybody listening. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you got some value today and I hope to see you in the Miracle Morning community.

Right on.

Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that interview. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson.

Me.

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